A Manifesto for Murder

The Hamas charter reveals their Nazi-like genocidal orientation to Jews in general.

Much has been said about the Hamas charter's call for the destruction of Israel and the need for Hamas to renounce this goal as the condition for being granted international legitimacy, economic aid and diplomatic recognition.

But an examination of the charter (available at http://www.palestinecenter.org/cpap/documents/charter.html) reveals that Hamas, also known as the Islamic Resistance Movement, is not just dedicated (however wrongly or murderously) to the destruction of Israel. It shows Hamas to be governed by a Nazi-like genocidal orientation to Jews in general.

It would be no surprise if a self-styled Palestinian liberation movement depicted Israel in unflattering or even (if we indulge the movement some license to exaggerate) venomous terms. Yet Hamas' 9,000-word charter of 1988 -- repeatedly reconfirmed by its leaders -- pits Jews, Israelis and Zionists (used pretty much interchangeably in the charter) in Manichaean conflict, not just with Palestinians, but with Islam, which to Hamas is synonymous with all goodness.

"Israel, by virtue of its being Jewish and of having a Jewish population, defies Islam and the Muslims," Article 28 of the charter says. This otherwise stunning statement is not surprising, given that Hamas describes Jews and Israel as a cosmic evil. Almost mimicking Nazi textbooks, Hamas contends that Zionism does "not hesitate to take any road, or to pursue all despicable and repulsive means to fulfill its desires." And what are those desires? "To demolish societies, to destroy values, to wreck answerableness, to totter virtues and to wipe out Islam. It stands behind the diffusion of drugs and toxics of all kinds in order to facilitate its control and expansion." (Article 28)

Hamas sees Jews as extremely malevolent and also extremely powerful, capable of achieving their desires. In a hallucinatory anti-Semitic passage recalling the most extreme Nazi ideologues, the charter asserts that the Jews amassed wealth that permitted them to "take over control of the world media such as news agencies, the press, publication houses, broadcasting and the like. [They also used this] wealth to stir revolutions in various parts of the globe in order to fulfill their interests and pick the fruits. They stood behind the French and the Communist Revolutions and behind most of the revolutions we hear about here and there." (Article 22)

Pursuing this hallucinatory reverie (among the clandestine organizations the Jews allegedly use to take over the world, "Rotary Clubs" are highlighted), Hamas' charter then describes Jewish power and malevolence as still more sinister: The Jews "used the money to take over control of the Imperialist states and made them colonize many countries in order to exploit the wealth of those countries and spread their corruption therein.... They stood behind World War I, so as to wipe out the Islamic Caliphate .... They obtained the Balfour Declaration and established the League of Nations in order to rule the world by means of that organization. They also stood behind World War II, where they collected immense benefits from trading with war materials and prepared for the establishment of their state."

As if this wild, anti-Semitic litany, which includes Jews establishing the United Nations as part of their plan for world domination, is insufficient, Hamas declares that "there was no war that broke out anywhere without their fingerprints on it." (Article 22)

With how much power will the Jews be satisfied? According to Hamas, "Zionist scheming has no end, and after Palestine they will covet expansion from the Nile to the Euphrates. Only when they have completed digesting the area on which they will have laid their hand, they will look forward to more expansion, etc. Their scheme has been laid out in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion." (Article 32)

Hamas is determined to rouse the Islamic world to act in the only manner adequate to the danger. Negotiation, compromise, any permanent modus vivendi with Israel and Jews is not thinkable. Jihad and destruction is.

Faced with this demonic enemy, Hamas is determined to rouse the Islamic world to act in the only manner adequate to the danger. Negotiation, compromise, any permanent modus vivendi with Israel and Jews (Jews' very existence in Israel is deemed an affront against Islam), is not thinkable. Jihad and destruction is. Proclaiming every inch of Palestine, including all of Israel, to be Palestinian and Islamic, and in accord with its demonic view of Jews, the charter declares, "[Peace] initiatives, the so-called peaceful solutions, and the international conferences to resolve the Palestinian problem, are all contrary to the beliefs of the Islamic Resistance Movement."

Why? Because "renouncing any part of Palestine means renouncing part of the religion; the nationalism of the Islamic Resistance Movement is part of its faith, the movement educates its members to adhere to its principles and to raise the banner of Allah over their homeland as they fight their Jihad." (Article 13)

So what is left for Hamas and all Muslims to do? Despite Hamas' pro-forma statement that "humane" Hamas will tolerate Jews and Christians only under the impossible condition that they live under Islamic fundamentalist domination (Article 31), the genocidal logic of Hamas' foundational document is explicit: "Hamas has been looking forward to [implementing] Allah's promise whatever time it might take. The prophet, prayer and peace be upon him, said: The time will not come until Muslims will fight the Jews (and kill them); until the Jews hide behind rocks and trees, which will cry: O Muslim! there is a Jew hiding behind me, come on and kill him! This will not apply to the Gharqad, which is a Jewish tree." (Article 7)

This is no selective reading of Hamas' charter, as the extensive quotations indicate. The charter's almost classically Nazi accounts of Jews and its annihilative reveries form the core of Hamas' uncompromising and divinely ordained canonical version of the Declaration of Independence.

As a lifelong student of Nazism and its radical murderousness, I have always been extremely reluctant to use the epithet "Nazi" for other reprehensible, anti-Semitic or genocidal movements. Whatever the other differences, the anti-Semitism and the murderous logic that form the principal content and rhetorical structure and substructure of this charter and this political party are unmistakably Nazi-like with regard to Jews.

The last 100 years have shown that those expressing murderous dreams, like Hitler, mean it.

Imagine if a territory or country next to the United States, Germany, France or Britain were governed by a political party that had repeatedly terrorized and murdered citizens of its neighbor, and had issued a governing charter about Americans, Germans, French or Britons that described the people of that country as Hamas describes Jews -- calling not only for that country's destruction but also for the mass murder of its people.

Would people in that country accept the threatening political party as a fit partner in peace? Would people say that a political party harboring such profoundly irrational beliefs, fomenting such uncompromising hatred and speaking the language of mass murder should receive international aid that could only further its hold on power and facilitate its murderous intentions?

Hamas' charter should not be dismissed as just words, and all that it contains would not be nullified even if Hamas, under pressure, renounced its goal to destroy Israel. (So far, Hamas has adamantly defended its genocidal charter.)

Seldom in the modern world has a political party enshrined such hallucinatory hatred and overt murderousness against another people in its constitution, and more seldom still has such a party taken power. The Nazi Party Program of 1920 also contained much anti-Semitism, but compared to Hamas' charter, its demonology and prescriptions were tame. Given the extreme political costs of such speech, governments, political parties and political leaders rarely speak the language of annihilation openly. So when they do, we should take them at their word. The last 100 years have shown that those expressing murderous dreams, like Hitler, mean it.

The opinions expressed in the comment section are the personal views of the commenters. Comments are moderated, so please keep it civil.

Visitor Comments: 11

(11)
Joe,
February 24, 2006 12:00 AM

What Daniela says is certainly true, but...

But, it is not now, nor has it ever been simply a matter of religious conviction on the part of the Arabs.

I do not debate for a second that there is a religious underpinning that is being used as the vehicle for a message of hatred and destruction. Of course there is. But that is not the whole story. The whole story is much more alarming, and much more dangerous.

There are conditions in a society that make the people ripe for a quasi religious message like that to be packaged to them. There is a mechanism to evil. I do not doubt the existence of a large number of true believer Islamists for which your take is all that is needed, but we need to look at the mechanism by which what is clearly evil becomes seen as good in the eyes of a *people.*

It isn't just that they have a meanie view of G-d. They are brutal, frightened and poor. They have no loving spirituality to give them hope and no physical comfort to make them feel secure. Please do *not* take what I am saying as pro Palestinian in any way. Please hear me out.

They are used to poverty and brutality. They have a victim complex and are so very insecure and angry that they can not suffer to look at any of their own failings, and see no point to constructive effort.

The other option is violence.

When you have a populace that is that disenfranchised and has been that brutalized, at thier own hands, the hands of loosing all the wars that they started, the hands of the corruption of their own leaders and by just simple poverty, you get many very angry, very violent and very uneducated people. The fact that their culture never really made it out of the middle ages does not help either.

When a leader pops up and starts telling them that G-d wants them to be angry, suddenly the brutal nature of a hard life gains divine sanction. But it could be nationalism or even football to give the release. Evil becomes goodness. But it is still more than that. The looser mentality gets subsumed into the vision of the glorious future. When one felt weak before noe there is the mob and the security of being a part of a big movement. Further, the religious or patriotic fanatic is seen as honest. The corruption of the past regime drives the angry mob further into the hands of the truely evil.

To the mind of the basic Hamasnik it is simple; pain and degredation on the one hand vs. glory, release through violence, and divine futures on the other.

It would be much harder to ask what could be done to fix up our economy? How do we remove corruption? What did we do to get here and how do we get out? Instead, blame the other, nationalize your anger and have a quasi religious dogma that justifies it all. Then you have a "righteous" dogma confabulated with a "righteous" sense of *pay back.* It doesn't matter if the accounts are accurate.
What matters is that someone else gets to be abused.

This is the parallel to be made to Germany.

The point is that in such times all manner of evil can be found and all manner of vileness can be justified.
If it were just simply a matter of Islam, it would be vastly less dangerous. That is why we need to be united and on gaurd. When the war comes, it will be a real nasty one.

(10)
Daniela,
February 23, 2006 12:00 AM

What's *really* the root of all this ?

We must always keep in mind the real reasons why they fight us to begin with, not just the mere fact that they want to kill us and that's that. Unfortunately, most people simply don't know enough about the most pertinent and important facts about Koranian Law :

1) Any land once ruled over or owned by a Muslim is forever Muslim. Any non-Muslim government who subsequently rules over that land or has an army there is considered an Occupier. It doesn't matter how they got there, how they settled on it, who asked them to be there, or what good they might be doing, every Muslim has a religious obligation to oust the Occupier. No matter what, or how long, it takes.
2) Jews living amongst Muslims are not allowed to own land, bear arms (which includes an army or just a knife in your pocket) or hold public office, and must be barred from many professions so as not to be allowed to become too prosperous.

Israel is a Jewish state on land once ruled over by the Ottoman Empire (which means ALL of it is Occupied Territory), which happens to be the most politically free, most economically prosperous (per capita), with an army that defeated five Arab armies attacking at once four separate times, the third in six days! The amount of sheer embarrassment for all this alone is enough to despise Israel. But hatred of Israel and Jews is in fact a religious obligation. A Jewish state on "Muslim" land can't be tolerated in the first place, but a prosperous, strong and free Israel is a "slap in G-d's face". Israel's existence is an embarrassment pure and simple. That's why it doesn't matter how long it takes or what they have to do, as long as our existence is _undermined_, even if it is not eliminated.

The fact that there can be parallels drawn with any other time in history doesn't connect with their religious obligation to make sure our existence is never comfortable, to say the least. Power trip or not, blame game or propaganda war, all these are just methods and means to the same end - undermine or eliminate Israel's and the Jews' existence so that no one, least of all G-d, could ever accuse any Muslim of letting G-d down by not doing their part to make sure that we, who are hated by G-d, could never be seen by non-believers as being favored by G-d. Regardless of the cost to them or to anyone else, we Jews must be seen by the world as enemies of G-d, or the Muslim world will have failed as His warriors and defenders. How they go about it is just a matter of how many ideas they can come up with to make that happen. They will never give up because they will never believe Israel has a right to exist - it would be like expecting us to give up our belief in the truth of the Torah. They can only be defeated, not convinced. How they live only makes it easier to keep the fight alive, but belief in the fight itself doesn't take any convincing on the part of Arab leaders, no matter how much they have to distract their people from their own misery.

Would the Nazi party have been able to have a branch in the form of the Muslim Brotherhood in the 30's and 40's had it not been for the poverty and squalor in Arab countries? You bet they would! Would the child of the Muslim Brotherhood, Al Queda, have had the same impact and power if the Arab world was entirely middle class? I think so. Nothing about the world or our situation or the Hamas charter would be any different at all if they all lived any differently than they do now, politically or economically. *That's* the truth the world is going to have to face.

(9)
Andy,
February 16, 2006 12:00 AM

The existance of Israel as a Jewish State

The goal of the Palestinians is destruction of the Jewsih State. It seems that observent Jews should follow the obligation to treat the Palestinians according to the guidelines in the Torah as interpreted by our modern sages and if one is not a believer then according to the laws set up by the Israeli gov't.
Richard writes that "The Palestinians want more than quasi-nation status, access to water and other resources being hoarded by the Jewish State, and free movement of their constituents. They want freedom!

The Palestinians only want the annihilation of Israel because they perceive that Israel would like to evaporate their people ( or at least leave them to rot in hopeless, apartheid squalor)"

This statement misses the main point.It seems that Islam will not willingly accept a Jewsih State in the Middle East no matter how Jews behave towards Arabs.
As I think it is taught When Jews fulfill their obligations as stated in the Torah Islam along with the Nations will recognize Israels need to exist as the Jewish State as beneficial to all mankind. May we be blessed to witness that day ASAP!

(8)
MOSHE GEWIRTZ,
February 16, 2006 12:00 AM

HEINIE LO YANOOM V'LO YISHAN SHOMER YISROEL

AS IMPORTANT AS IT IS TO SHARE INFO LIKE THIS, PLEASE ADD AN ENCOURAGING WORD TO THIS TYPE OF DEPRESSING STUFF IN THE FUTURE.
KEEP UP YOUR GOOD WORK. I ALWAYS EAT MY LUNCH WITH AISH. LABRIUT!!

(7)
Joe,
February 13, 2006 12:00 AM

You are on the money, but you do not say enough

You need to add the images of Palestinians dancing in the streets when murders occur, like after 9-11 or whatever the latest outrage is. You need to show the camera panning out ot the swarms of cheering thugs whenever one of these monsters screams to kill us all. You need to show the routine use and indocrination of their young.

You need to clearly make the point that there could have been no Hitler without the support of the Germans. Stalin would have been nothing without the Red Army. You need to point these things out. People need to understand that not only do sociopathic beasts like Hamas mean what they say, but the people want them to mean it. It is much easier to blame others then to take responsibility for one's own life.

There is a cycle here that is all too common in history. Understanding the cycle, where the leader makes reference to a mythical non-existant cultural past (the caliphate, valhalla, mother russia) to rile up the people (chosen by g-d, history, race etc...) to take their rightful place at the head of the world, (if not for those Jews, capitalists, communists, blacks etc...) in order to establish power and a complete decay of civilised behavior. Look at Islam today carefully. The message above was used by tyrants back to Ceasar. The message works. It is one of the fundamental engines of evil in a culture. Realize how this played out all the other times.
Realize that the economic and social conditions in the Islamic world make the people ripe for this message. They have hard lives. They have been taught to blame you and will rejoice at the murder
of your children.

What terrifies me is not that it is being said. What terrifies me is how well it always works! What terrifies me is how soft and weak we are in comparison to the generation that fought Hitler. What terrifies me is that we argue about trivialities and eat well while they get leaner and stronger each day. What terrifies me is that they will come to kill us, and on that day we will be surprised.

Please, my fellow Jews, look at this for what it is. History is repeating. They will come to get us and we are not as strong as we would like. Get ready to fight. Don't let us die out because we didn't try.

(6)
Richard,
February 12, 2006 12:00 AM

We Create Our World

No doubt that the Hamas political and military cadres are violently opposed to Zionism and its supporters. But it is also true that Israel has isolated the Palestinian people in order to maintain their insular superiority to them. That has breeded generation after generation of resentment and retribution, both of which abound on both sides of Sharon's self-proclaimed, bordered wall separating them. The Jewish state has bullied and conquered these lands, built unlawful settlements, and forced Palestinians to live in squatter towns perpetually.

So while the hopes for peace have perhaps been lessened with a Hamas-controlled government in power, in many ways the issues dividing the two nations are more evident than ever before. The Palestinians want more than quasi-nation status, access to water and other resources being hoarded by the Jewish State, and free movement of their constituents. They want freedom!

The Palestinians only want the annihilation of Israel because they perceive that Israel would like to evaporate their people ( or at least leave them to rot in hopeless, apartheid squalor). This formula, this arrogance by Israel, is well-aligned with the American macho hegemony of forcing Jeffersonian democracy on ragheads or evaporating them in its name.

The Nazis and the Hamas-type radicals only found/find fuel in the gross neglect of the haves for the have-nots. We now live in a highly-charged, well-connected world. The disgusting disparities between the Judeo-Christian brotherhood and the more humble non-Caucasian and Islamic believers has never been more stark.

When America marched into Iraq, the American government led by groggy Bush thought that everyone will love us. How deluded we are to think that people love to be occupied and enslaved in order to bolster the rich nations of the world.

War and hatred can only find an end when we stop believing that our way is the right way. Everyone needs dignity, no matter whether they carry a gun or a baby in their arms. Everyone needs a chance to find happiness in a borderless, truly open world. Then, and only then, will violent people lay down their arms and seek peace, happiness, fulfilment and a sense of community.

(5)
Ralf,
February 12, 2006 12:00 AM

Goldhagen on Hamas

Incredible to believe and a slap on the faces of people who think that Hamas can reform

(4)
Anonymous,
February 12, 2006 12:00 AM

re article and Dr.Pinsker's comment

"The people of Hamas are simply more open about their true sentiments than the rest of the world. The message of Jew hatred is a permanent rejection of Jews not fulfilling there role as the Al-Mighty’s messengers to teach humanity the truth of Torah both as it applies to the Jewish People and the non-Jews via the Seven Noachide Laws"

A speculative and possibly slanderous statement such as this is something one may expect from Hamas. To believe that the rest of world shares Hamas'desires but doesn't admit it is based on what? That's like saying the Jews shared the goals of every evil perpetrated in the world just because sometimes individual Jews were involved. Many Jewish people did not[although predominately "secular" Jews often did more than most others] as a united, religious, organized group fight all theses evils.[apartheid,slavery,colonialism, etc ]Most people do not endanger themselves and their families to save others.That may make them weak and cowardly and so removed from their essence as to appear and maybe become indifferent. That is a long way from being like Hamas where you
exist primarily to exterminate another people. Hamas' philosophy[as Naziism] seems to mirror Amelek. To subscribe that goal to the rest of the world seems untrue and a slander against those who have taken great risks on behalf of Israel and the Jewish people.To quote Aish/Torah as the source for this opinion seems problematic as well. An opinion is not a fact and the evidence seems to me to be lacking here.

(3)
Dr. Alex Pister,
February 12, 2006 12:00 AM

Torah is both the source and the solution of Jew hatred

The analogy of "Hamasism" and "Nazism" Mr. Goldhagen makes is both articulate and accurate. However, his hesitation to further the analogy to all forms of Jew hatred bespeaks a lack of awareness/clarity as to the authentic source of Jew hatred. Although, as he puts it he is a "life long student of Nazism" no real authentic Jewish analysis of Jew hatred is presented here. He seems to be making a distinction between the “really big Jew haters who he feels comfortable applying the label “Nazi” to and the not so big Jew haters” who don’t qualify for the label. Socio-political as well as constitutional analysis aside the distinction between the Torah view and all the other explanations of Jew hatred is both exquisitely subtle and yet earth shattering. The analysis is actually shocking in its simplicity. The Jewish People are the authors of their own destiny. To the extent that we embrace the Al-Mighty and His Torah so too are we guaranteed all the best that creation has to offer. And Vice Versa. To the extent we reject the Al-Mighty and His Torah so that we can live like all the other nations in nature we become subject to the laws of the natural jungle of amoral humanity. Jews would like to think that: “If only we had a place among the nations to live normally like all other nations…..then we’d be O.K.”. So we accumulate fortresses of weapons, planes and ammo. In the end there has never been any non-Jewish nation that truly accepts the state of israel. And if this “dodging of the issue” continues there never will be. Not until we, the Jewish People, accept our true role as given in the Torah. For those of us with little or no background of what traditional Judaism has to say about what our role exactly is there is no better a place to start than the Aish website. Even better is to learn at an Aish centre if available nearby. The best is to come to Jerusalem and study at Aish. Never before has there been such opportunity available. The people of Hamas are simply more open about their true sentiments than the rest of the world. The message of Jew hatred is a permanent rejection of Jews not fulfilling there role as the Al-Mighty’s messengers to teach humanity the truth of Torah both as it applies to the Jewish People and the non-Jews via the Seven Noachide Laws. The more, and longer, we try to skirt this reality the more and longer will the agony Jew hatred continue. As recommended reading go to the home page of Aish.com and click on the “Why the Jews” icon for a very accurate and detailed dissertation about the phenomenon of Jew Hatred.

(2)
Anonymous,
February 12, 2006 12:00 AM

I cannot believe it, although its the terrible truth

During world war II I was the child of one of these ordinary Germans. And as I jused to listen what the grownup told, already by the age of 8 I knew about concentration camps. I find it unbelievable that the rest of the world
take the Hammas and their charta as if nothing happened, or nearly nothing.
During all these years nobody learned anything, to see the evil where it is and fight it. Although I know that it is not that easy. As I am a Jew now, I am waiting anxiously for the coming of the mashiach. Blessed be Israel!!!!!!!!!!

(1)
Anonymous,
February 12, 2006 12:00 AM

terrific but so frightening

As Jews we certainly live in dangerous times as anti- semitism is on the rise in the most subtle ways. Not one inch more of land should be given up.

I always loved the story of Jonah and the whale. Why do we read it during the afternoon service of Yom Kippur?

The Aish Rabbi Replies:

Let's recap the story: God tells Jonah to go to Ninveh and to prophesy that in 40 days, God will destroy the city. Instead, Jonah goes to Jaffa, boards a ship, and sails for Tarshish. A great storm arises. Frightened, Jonah goes to sleep in the ship's hold. The sailors somehow recognize that Jonah is responsible for the storm. They throw him overboard, and the sea becomes calm.

A great fish swallows Jonah. Then three days later, God commands the fish to spit Jonah back out upon dry land. God tells Jonah, "Let's try it again. Go to Ninveh and tell them in 40 days I will destroy the city."

The story is a metaphor for our struggle for clarity. Jonah is the soul. The soul is assigned to sanctify the world, and draw it close to God. But we are seduced by the world's beauty. (Jaffa in Hebrew means "beauty.") The ship is the body, the sea is the world, and the storm is life's pains and troubles. God hopes confrontation with mortality will inspire us to examine our lives. But Jonah's is the more common response - we go to sleep (have a beer, turn on the television). The sailors throw Jonah overboard - this is death. The fish that swallows Jonah is the grave. Jonah is spat back upon the land - reincarnation. And the Almighty tells us to try again. "Go sanctify the world and bring it close to God."

Each of us is born with an opportunity and a challenge. We each have unique gifts to offer the world and unique challenges to perfect ourselves. If we leave the task unfinished the first time, we get a second chance. Jonah teaches us that repentance can reverse a harsh decree. If the residents of Ninveh had the ability to correct their mistakes and do teshuva, how much more so do we have the ability to correct our former mistakes and do teshuva.

(source: "The Bible for the Clueless But Curious," by Rabbi Nachum Braverman)

In 1948, Egypt launched a large-scale offensive against the Negev region of Israel. This was part of the War of Independence, an attack by five Arab armies designed to "drive the Jews into the sea." Though the Jews were under-armed, untrained, and few in number, through ingenuity and perseverance they staved off the attacks and secured the borders. Yet the price was high -- Israel lost 6,373 of its people, a full one percent of the Jewish population of Israel at the time.

And what does teshuvah consist of? [Repentance to the degree] that the One Who knows all that is hidden will testify that he will never again repeat this sin(Maimonides, Laws of Teshuvah 2:2).

"How can this be?" ask the commentaries. "Inasmuch as man always has free choice to do good or evil, to sin or not to sin, how can God testify that a person will never repeat a particular sin? Is this not a repudiation of one's free will?"

The answer to this came to me at a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous, at which the speaker, a man who had been sober for twenty-one years, said, "The man I was drank. The man I was will drink again. But now I am a different man."

A sin does not occur in a vacuum. A person who is devout does not abruptly decide to eat treifah. A sin occurs when a person is in such a state that a particular act is not anathema to him.

Consequently, repentance is not complete if one merely regrets having done wrong. One must ask, "How did this sin ever come about? In what kind of a state was I that permitted me to commit this sin?"

True repentance thus consists of changing one's character to the point where, as the person is now, one can no longer even consider doing the forbidden act. Of course, the person's character may deteriorate - and if it does, he may sin again.

God does not testify that the person will never repeat the sin, but rather that his degree of repentance and correction of his character defects are such that, as long as he maintains his new status, he will not commit that sin.

Today I shall...

try to understand how I came to do those things that I regret having done, and bring myself to a state where such acts will be alien to me.

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